Pre-releases

The goal of the EVS Pre-Releases is to make the current data of the European Values ​​Study, which has been back in the field since September 2017, quickly available for research. They are lean products created by the research group at Tilburg University, the participating countries and the GESIS data archive. The data is based on the questions of the Master Questionnaire but does not yet include all harmonized and derived variables. The documentation provides information on the creation and processing of national data, but still in a compact format.

The first pre-release includes data from 16 countries (Armenia, Bulgaria, Germany, Georgia, Iceland, Croatia, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Czech Republic, Belarus – marked blue in the map). They can be downloaded as an integrated data set EVS 2017 in the data stock catalog of the GESIS data archive (study number ZA7500).

By December 2018, other ten European countries have completed fieldwork, with four countries currently in the field. A second pre-release is therefore planned for July 2019.

The Full Data Release (December 2019) will contain the data of all countries participating in the EVS, and also other harmonized variables, such as: on education and occupational status as well as weighting variables, and be well documented. In addition, it will form the basis for the EVS Longitudinal Data File 1981-2017 and will assist researchers in longitudinal analysis and the inclusion of the extensive body of data from the World Values ​​Survey. The European Values Study and the World Values Survey agreed to collaborate in carrying out the 2017 values survey in Europe. In line with this agreement, both organizations coordinated the questionnaire’s design and the overlap in the two questionnaires is about 70%. In all European countries, the EVS questionnaire is applied, and data collection is coordinated by EVS according to the strict methodological guidelines prepared by EVS Methodology Group that are specifically adapted to the European context.

The standard mode of data collection in EVS is Face-to-Face interview. However, in the 5th wave, mixed-mode were allowed. Six countries (Finland, Germany, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) conducted web-survey alongside the traditional personal interviews. This data will be available with the second pre-release in the summer of 2019 Together with detailed information on the methodical design of the EVS 2017.

One goal of EVS Pre-releases is to improve the quality of the data and its documentation. Information on errors or omissions in the data and the documentation is very welcome. Please report any problems in data and documentation to the EVS Data Service at GESIS, Cologne. Many thanks!